Roots & Wings: 100+ free events for Austin nature

Austin's Roots & Wings Festival is in its ninth year, and it's a big one. Organized by Austin Climate Action & Resilience, the festival runs for 16 days from October 17 to November 1, with more than 100 free, family-friendly events spread across Austin and the surrounding area. It pulls together Arbor Day and Monarch Appreciation Day into a single celebration of the city's urban forest, its pollinators, and nature in the city.

The festival started back in 2018 as a one-day gathering and has grown into something that reaches tens of thousands of residents every year. Austin is a Tree City USA and sits right along the monarch butterfly migration route, so the theme fits the place. The team behind it, led by Director Zach Baumer, is working toward a goal of net-zero community-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.

If you're looking for something to do this weekend, the festival saves its biggest concentration of events for the final days. Sunday, October 31, is a busy one over at Zilker Botanical Garden, with a Bird Sighting Walk at 9:00 AM, a Pollinator Walk and kids' tree climbs starting at 10:00 AM, guided nature walks running through the early afternoon, and monarch butterfly releases at 11:30 AM and 1:30 PM. The next day, November 1, the festival closes out with a Monarch Party in Zilker Park from 1:00 to 4:00 PM, a Moonlight Nature Night at the Nature & Science Center from 5:00 to 8:00 PM, and a sunset guided bat tour at the Rowing Dock from 6:00 to 8:00 PM, which runs $45 a person.

Zilker Park is a natural home for the festival. It's Austin's oldest metropolitan park, 351 acres at the meeting of Barton Creek and Lady Bird Lake, and it packs in a lot: the spring-fed Barton Springs Pool, the botanical garden with its Japanese and rose gardens, the Nature & Science Center and its Dino Pit, the hillside theater, the UMLAUF Sculpture Garden, and the Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail. There's also a free disc golf course and five reservable volleyball courts if you want to be active between events.

For something a bit more off the beaten path, the festival also reaches out to places like Circle Acres Nature Preserve, about 10 acres in the Montopolis neighborhood of South East Austin. It's a former landfill and EPA Brownfield that Ecology Action of Texas has turned into forest, wetland, and grassland, and it carries a lot of history as part of the old Black community once known as 'Poverty Island.'

With over a hundred events to track, the easiest way to plan is through the festival's own site, rootsandwingsfest.com, which has a new search tool that lets you filter by date, neighborhood, and type. Whether you want a guided walk, a hands-on workshop, or just a place to take the kids on a Sunday, there's plenty to pick from before the festival wraps up on November 1.